Jake Crist

Arborvitae It rises in a Champaign County bog Amid bedstraw and skunk cabbage, Rises out there in an ice age River valley gorged with glacial till, And swills the moraine-filtered rainwater With the wafer ash and honeysuckle. Stalwart, set apart, and biblical — As if one of that ancient company That gave its coniferous canonical body To the tent that shuttled God Through the wilderness. • They say that cedar and cypress Are the protectors of  bones. You see them from the freeway, standing alone, Statuesque and serious, In the dead middle of and vigilant In beanfields, where farmers used to plant Their families. • Who are you like in your greatness? Consider a cedar of Lebanon, with fair boughs And forest shade, and of great height, Its top among the clouds.

I find myself in the deep corridor that would have been dark if my right hand wasn’t shining like a torch. — Tomas Tranströmer One of those idle hours I did not want To participate in “group,” when it seemed Impossible I’d know a word to haunt Again, or make me laugh, or spur that dream To roam myself the ranges of the tongue; When on that ward I thought not one aspect Of anything, no matter how strong, strange, Or keen, could sharpen the “blunted affect” Even electric shock had no effect on    ... During one such despondent interval I read these lines from his New Directions New collected poems, and the verbal Sequence somehow composed the correct code To unlock feeling:corridor, right hand, Dark